Category: Empire

1500-1700

Ben Jonson and the ground charlatans

Like today’s miserable vendors of pirated CDs, early modern Venetian ambulants are trading on someone else’s stolen content, but at least they’ve had to learn it by heart.

How Emperor Charles V ended up talking German to his horse (1)

Domain-based code-switching from Daniel Bomberg’s Jerusalem Talmud to Hieronymus Fabricius’ De locutione. Featuring the wit and wisdom of Rabbi Jonathan of Beth Gubrin, Padua’s medical school and Jewry, and the Polish utopian Jan Zamoyski. With excerpts from Fellini’s I Clowns and a bodice-ripper by Kent M Chater, whose Agent Alighieri claims that “Like the great Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Spain I speak Spanish with God, French with men, German to my horse, and Italian to the ladies.”

Charles V and his horse discussing sociolinguistics before the Battle of Mühlberg (Titian <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carlos_V_en_M%C3%BChlberg,_by_Titian,_from_Prado_in_Google_Earth.jpg'>@Prado</a>).

The storks of war

A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.